THE BIG QUESTION FOR U.S. VOTERS: TO TAX OR NOT TO TAX

THE OBSERVERSep 2, 2008

Senators Obama and McCain face a crucial issue in their presidential campaigns: what to do about Bush's $2 trillion in temporary tax cuts, skewed towards the wealthy, which expire in 2010. LUKE FROEB, a free enterprise expert at Vanderbilt University's management school in Nashville, identifies this as a key ideological gap. He argues: 'Renegotiating Nafta would make our economy a lot less flexible. It would reduce income and make us all worse off.' An overt McCain supporter, Froeb views Obama as a classic interventionist who overestimates the government's power to control the economy. 'He's relatively young. He knows enough to be arrogant and not enough to be humble,' Froeb says. 'Whereas McCain knows enough to be humble. He sees a problem and he may understand that there isn't an immediate solution.'